by Wyatt Savage
It was a baseball!
My eyes zoomed up to see that Dwayne had tossed the baseball I’d given him. He’d thrown it with everything he had and smacked the creature in the mouth.
The thing broke off its descent and soared over us. I aimed and fired a shot from my spark-hammer that punched a hole through the monster’s chest.
-5 Health Points!
The creature bellowed, dropped, and rammed headfirst into the wall, before crashing down to the ground below.
No sooner had the beast fallen than forms appeared, sliding down over the top of the wall. The things resembled goblins or trolls, broad-shouldered, greenish-black in color, barely more than three-feet tall and carrying clubs and swords.
“Melee time,” Charlotte Frost muttered, whipping out her curved Kukri knife. I followed after Charlotte, hammer at the ready. The trolls threw themselves at us and we went on the attack, battering them with everything we had.
I watched Charlotte swing her knife in beautiful arcs, slicing through the throats of the trolls as the fell from the wall. A bearded troll leaped at me. I brought my hammer around, shattering the brute’s jaw. The troll fell from the wall and another revealed itself, swinging a short sword. I parried the troll’s thrust and kicked the monster in the groin. This doubled the troll over and I crushed its skull in a great gout of green blood. The troll fell from the wall and took my hammer with it. I wiped the creature’s blood from my face only to see Charlotte flinging her Kukri at me!
The knife grazed my cheek and slammed into the chest of a troll who’d snuck up behind me, knocking it from the wall. In all the confusion, I’d missed the little bastard on my HUD. If it wasn’t for Charlotte, the creature might have stabbed me.
I raised my hand to thank Charlotte, but she was already on the move. I ran after her and the others who were finishing off the last of the trolls, listening to Sue tell me that I was within inches of the top of the wall. It was shrouded in a gray mist, but I could see it just the same. The others had already climbed over it. Dwayne had stayed behind, straddling the top.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
I exhaled, grabbed the top of the wall and heaved myself over.
“Congratulations,” Sue said. “You have reached the top of the wall and completed Level 1 of the Melee. As a reward, you have obtained two thousand experience points.”
I’d expected something monumental upon climbing over the wall. Lights pulsing, maybe the clouds parting, but all I got for my troubles was a timer. A timer sounded all around, as loud as the sirens when the game first began.
The first portion of the Melee was indeed over.
Screams sounded for those still on the wall and I looked back and down as those who were unable to climb over exploded into green dust, a great cloud of it that filled the air on the other side.
“How many made it, Sue?” I asked. “How many from America?”
“Sixteen thousand, five hundred and ten,” she replied. “Out of an original three hundred and twenty-seven million.”
The number of dead was so staggering that I nearly fell from the wall.
“So many dead,” I whispered.
“The numbers mean nothing to the Noctem,” Sue added. “On my planet alone there were fifty-three billion that met their journey’s end.”
“My God. How many survived around my world?” I asked.
“There are one hundred and eleven thousand participants still competing globally.”
“How many are expected to make it through Level 2.”
“Unknown, but experience would suggest a little over twenty-one percent.”
“How many monsters does Level 2 have?”
“I am not at liberty to reveal that.”
“Don’t give me that, Sue.”
There was a pause, and then Sue whispered, “There are at least one hundred and eighty-nine different species lying in wait. How many of each species there are, I do not know.”
“Level with me, Sue—”
“I do not know what that means.”
“It means tell me the truth.”
Silence from Sue. I continued, “Is it going to be worse?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“What sense would that be?”
“This is not my first Melee, Logan…”
“I know.”
“I have worked with other participants.”
“How many?”
“Thousands,” Sue replied.
“How many made it through the Melee?”
The silence that followed was like a punch to the gut. None of them had made it out alive. I slapped my hand together, willing away the bad thoughts. Maybe none of the others had, but I would. I’d be the first one to make it through the game alive. I’d do that, or I’d go down fighting.
Dwayne grabbed my hand and helped me over. “You’re not going to believe this,” he whispered.
I squinted and took in the land on the other side of the wall.
There it was, there was Level 2.
The Noctem had evidently been hard at work because in place of the countryside, houses, and roads, was a kind of cityscape.
Whether it was a futuristic dungeon or some kind of extraterrestrial maze I couldn’t tell, but it was composed of a series of structures of varying sizes and shapes. Some of the structures were made of age-stained wood, others had been constructed from metal and still more were glass or some other clear, alien substance. Most of the buildings sprouted from the ground like weeds, but a few hovered in the air. Everything was connected by catwalks, pathways, ladders, and the like that stretched as far as the eye could see.
Strange lights glowed inside the structure and the unsettling sound of explosions, screams, and gunfire could be heard. I could see the shadowy forms of other participants entering the structure through what looked like a main entrance. Some of the participants were lightly clad, while others were encased in thick plate armor, or wreathed by barriers of bright light. I didn’t observe any who appeared to have Ragetags.
“Is that the way in, Sue?”
“There are twenty-four gates into the primary structure, what some call the Agora,” Sue replied. “There are six Agora in your country, and one hundred and seventeen throughout your world. All are different, but each shares the same Level 2 complexities and provides a pathway to the pyramid. Please note that the Reckoning makes no distinctions between the participants and none, absent victory, will find favor in the eyes of the Noctem.”
Charlotte, Agent Pei, Noora, and the others were already maneuvering ahead and they appeared to be walking through the air. I stuck out my hand and felt a pulse of compressed air. Dwayne was already standing on the air-walkway and he helped me up.
I gazed at the Agora and a status message appeared via my SecondSight HUD:
Status: Level 2 – The Reckoning
Objective: Proceed through the Agora and Defeat all Enemies to Reach the Hall Of Mirrors.
Reward: 4000 XP
Time limit: 5:00:00
Penalty for failing to reach the Hall of Mirrors: you will reach your journey’s end
Would you like to level up? Y/N
Dwayne and I moved toward the others.
“We did it, Logan,” Agent Pei said, looking back. “We made it out of Level 1.”
“Looks like the fun’s just beginning,” I said, catching my breath, taking in the sights and sounds of Level 2.
He nodded. “You ready to do this? You ready to take on Level 2?”
“What do you do when you hit a wall, Agent Pei?”
“You climb over it,” he replied.
We exchanged a look. We both knew what awaited us. We’d have to level up, hit the Reckoning hard, and pray for the best.
“Okay, let’s do it,” I said. “Let’s go kick Level 2’s ass.”
Agent Pei and the others moved ahead, helping Doctor Throgmorton along the way. I grabbed Charlotte’s wrist. She looked from my hand to my face, her weary expression hard to
read.
“Thank you for back there,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to do it at first,” she said. “I was going to let you taste the end of that troll’s sword.”
“Awful glad you didn’t.”
I offered her a weary smile that wasn’t returned. Charlotte pointed to my spark-hammer. “How much did that cost?”
“It was free.”
Her brows arched. “Seriously?”
“I killed one of them.”
“One of what?” she asked.
“The aliens.”
“Bullshit.”
I didn’t respond, instead moving past her. She grabbed my wrist. “You’re telling the truth aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Holy shit, if that’s true then maybe there’s a way. Maybe we can fight back against them.”
“Maybe,” I said softly. “Maybe.”
Maybe that was true and maybe it was all bullshit and we’d be dead in the next ten seconds. I no longer knew what was real and what wasn’t, but I knew that I had to keep moving forward.
I selected “Yes” on my prompt, and gripped my spark-hammer, trudging toward the entrance into the Agora with Charlotte on my right and Dwayne on my left. I was worried yet hopeful, unwilling to give up, and anxious to see what awaited us. Bring it on, Level 2, I thought. Bring it on.
THE END
Afterword
AUTHOR NOTES
Global battle royale, Stephen King’s The Long Walk, Monster Hunter, and a little bit of Gantz: O. Those were three of several things I was thinking about when the idea for this book came to me. I’m a huge fan of LitRPG, Dungeon Core, and GameLit books, but wanted to take things in a slightly different direction. The vision I had was of an MC who wasn’t sucked up into a game or a VR world but had an actual game imposed on him. I’ve got friends who’ve suffered quite a bit fighting overseas, so I wanted to focus on an everyman MC, a regular guy recovering from trauma (here, a TBI, a traumatic brain injury), who discovers that what he once saw as a curse actually may turn out to be a blessing. Not only does the injury work partially to his advantage, but the fact that he’d suffered a loss has actually prepared him better than most for the end of the world.
Book 1 is the introduction to the world of the Melee, but the plan is to incorporate side quests, including into those mysterious black spires (see the excerpt below for the Melee Chicago) (which focuses on a group of participants exploring a black spire in the Midwest), and follow the exploits of other participants in other parts of the country and world (Melee Mexico will be out in November). There are many more mysteries to discover in Book 2, conspiracies to unravel, and levels to explore as Logan and Dwayne fight to survive, track down Lish, and struggle to uncover the real reason for the game. Thanks for checking out Melee Book 1! If you enjoyed it, kindly leave a review on Amazon as reviews are exceptionally helpful to authors. Also, be on the lookout for other books in the series, which will be out very soon.
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Also by Wyatt Savage
Melee Chicago
MELEE CHICAGO - Copyright © 2019 by Wyatt Savage. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction and no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without permission in writing from the publisher and copyright owner, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by GameLitRPG, an imprint of Discover GameLit.
Created with Vellum
MELEE CHICAGO
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
-T. Roosevelt
MELEE CHICAGO
By Wyatt Savage
What happens in the black spire, stays in the black spire.
Kurtis Evinrude was a broken man, a convict who’d lost his job, his family, and everything he’d ever cared about. But when the global game known as the Melee begins, Kurtis is given an opportunity. Saved by a mortally wounded guard, Kurtis breaks out of prison and escapes into the mean streets of Chicago. Teaming up with an asskicking female fighter, Kurtis battles nightmarish monsters and bloodthirsty game participants as he goes on a quest, gaining points, stashing loot, leveling up, and fighting his way through the different levels of a mysterious black spire to fulfill the guard’s dying wish that he track down and protect his young son.
Come check out the second book in the Melee series, which is a mashup of Fortnite, Monster Hunter, and good old fashioned battle royale.
*Note: this book follows Melee Book 1, but functions as a side quest. That is, while this book takes place during the Melee, it focuses on different characters in a different city. Some of these characters will reappear in a later book or books, potentially joining forces with or squaring off against characters from Melee Book 1, and the other Melee books, including the upcoming Melee: Mexico. Hope you enjoy!
Melee Chicago Chapter 1
Welcome to the Party!
In the profound blackness of the witch hole, Kurtis Evinrude learned to love pain. It called to him when he sat in the five-by-five concrete box, knees wedged under his chin, and when he massaged the stitches in his lower jaw, still raw and leaking red, burning when he slurped at the gray gruel the guard passed to him through a gap in the metal door that was no larger than a mail slot. The pain sharpened his senses and it meant that he was alive, at least for another day. Staying alive was a full-time gig in the MCC, Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, a twenty-six-story tower of concrete and steel straight out of the Brutalist school of architecture.
Someone knocked on the metal door. A man’s voice asked, “How’s life, Kurt?” Kurtis recognized the voice. It was Jimmy Mulvey, one of the COs, a correctional officer, a big Lummox of an Irishman in his late-forties.
“Taking forever,” Kurtis replied.
With a hollow chuckle, Jimmy pushed open the slot, which caused a section of metal, maybe half of a TV dinner tray, Kurtis thought, to unfold and extend into the witch hole. Kurtis shielded his eyes as a few daggers of light crept through the slot. A metal plate was on top of the tray, steam rising from a little mound of pureed mystery meat and riced cauliflower.
“I do believe this is some Eighth Amendment stuff right here,” Kurtis said, squinting, turning up his nose even as he took the plate. He picked at the grub with a set of worn chopsticks he kept hidden in the cuff of his pants. “Definitively cruel and totally unusual.”
“I’ll get you that BP-8 form so you can lodge an objection,” Jimmy said, chuckling.
“Right, ‘cause it worked so well the last time I complained...”
“Bureau of Prisons doesn’t take kindly to malcontents.”
“I was just following the handbook, Jimmy,” Kurtis replied, tongue-firmly-in-cheek. “Page thirty-two says in order to prevent sexual assault you must be firm and direct if others ask you to do something you don’t want to do. Sea claro y firme si otros…”
“You stabbed the bastard in the ear with a toothbrush.”
“I didn’t want to send any mixed messages.”
“He was in the infirmary for nearly two weeks.”
> A few heartbeats of silence, then Kurtis asked, “So…did the bastard die?”
“Nope, made it out of surgery seven days ago.”
Kurtis balled up his fists, thinking about the man he’d shanked, Rignal Hankerson, a nearly seven-foot-tall scarecrow of a thug that the lifers called ‘Big Rig.’ Kurtis took a few bites of the food and pushed the tray over to a wall etched with twenty-two slashes to denote the number of days he’d spent in the witch hole.
“Big Rig’s gonna want to have a word with you when you get out of DS,” Jimmy warned, using guard talk for disciplinary segregation.
“I figured,” Kurtis scoffed. His battle with Big Rig had sent him to the infirmary for two days and then, once his jaw had semi-healed, the Discipline Hearing Officer had chucked him down into the witch hole for twenty-four more to think about what he’d done. He’d been away from the other inmates, out of “populace” was the preferred term, for nearly twenty-seven days, so far removed from the daily rhythms of the MCC that it was like he’d stepped off the edge of the world.
Jimmy cleared his throat. “Course, your situation could be worse…”
“Couldn’t possibly be,” Kurtis replied, thinking about how Rignal and his crew would likely be the first to greet him when he was released from the hole in forty-eight hours.
“You could be getting ready for the game,” Jimmy said.
“Cubs or the Bulls?”
“The Melee.”
Kurtis rubbed his ear. He hadn’t heard Jimmy right. “The what?”
Jimmy moved so close to the slot that Kurtis could see a portion of the guard’s face. Something flickered in Jimmy’s eyes. Something he’d never seen before. What was it? Uncertainty? Fear?
“What were you doing twenty-six days ago?” Jimmy asked.
“Comin’ out of surgery.”